The debut from duo Casey Fundaro and Christopher Moll as timewellspent occupies its own little corner of the pop universe — a place that seems both familiar and foreign. Fundaro’s whispery voice echoes Zombie Colin Blunstone’s, and the willowy production — with its way-down-tempo rhythms and loping steel guitars — conjures Meddle-era Floyd, but overall this collection of curios is like nothing you think you may have heard. An air of wistful regret hovers over these tunes like tule fog, no more so than on the yearning "I Know You," in which the singer pines for an estranged lover against a melody that recalls "Strawberry Fields Forever" played at half speed. On "Anyone to Be," love’s object is unattainable altogether: "Glimpsing at a narrow space/Lost inside your somber face/Knowing there’s no room/For anyone/Anyone to be." Occasionally, things get a bit precious — the Bacharachian "Probably" is as twee as an artfully sewn doily — and the lyrics sometimes lapse into cliché (let’s finally banish "building castles in the sand" from the lexicon). But these minor quibbles should not take away from what is essentially a bleakly gorgeous, delicately doomy account of the rigors of love.
|